Visions from the LA Rebellion: An Interview with Charles Burnett and Billy Woodberry
In the early 1970s, a young Billy Woodberry asked a young Charles Burnett,“Pudovkin or Eisenstein?” Both Woodberry and Burnett were students at UCLA’s film school and were among the first generation of Black filmmakers admitted. For film students, debating the merits of two Russian theorists of montage was not uncommon. Burnett responded, “Pudovkin, because he’s more humanist.” It’s a true statement, but Burnett’s preference for a director who had an edge in “sentimentality and emotionalism” proved, in retrospect, a fitting answer given the the type of films both would go on to create together and apart.
Those films would become part of what film scholar Clyde Taylor coined the LA Rebellion, a movement started by the first generation Black filmmakers at UCLA in the late 1960s and extending into the late 1980s that broke ground for Black cinema. Taking influence from Italian Neorealism and Third Cinema, the features and shorts created during this period are recognized for their sincere depictions of Black Americans, imbuing characters with a depth and nuance that stood in stark contrast to the racial stereotypes and characterizations seen in films and television during the period.
“We always talked about the films we should be making when we were together,” Burnett said when asked how he felt Black communities were represented on screen. “We would go to UCLA in the morning, afternoon, or evenings, and spend the rest of the time in a restaurant or something arguing about what kinds of films we should be making. It was a conscious thing all the time … what we should be doing and what films we should be rejecting from early Hollywood films starting with Birth of a Nation and even into Black Exploitation to a large extent.”
Cinema’s problematic history with Black characters is as old as the medium itself. The first feature length film, the aforementioned Birth of a Nation, positioned the Ku Klux Klan as national saviors against demonized African Americans. The first instance of synchronized sound in cinema, The Jazz Singer, notoriously showcased Al Jolson performing in blackface. And throughout the decades, well documented Black tropes and racist themes in Hollywood films — ranging from mammy stereotypes, the ‘Magical Negro,’ white saviors, interracial taboos, and racial criminalization — reinforced harmful and inaccurate views of Black Americans, and further fueled and perpetuated a vicious cycle of bigoted portrayals in the media.
The power of representation and the authenticity of that depiction was a lesson Burnett experienced from an early age: “I remember seeing Asian films for the first time like Kurosawa or Ozu, and when I saw them I was so taken and surprised. You’re stunned because [you’ve been] so misinformed about who people are through cinema and American films. When you see them, [you] figure the same thing happens to them when they see films made by people here.”
Illustrating that point further, Burnett recalls an interaction many years after his time as a UCLA student. "I remember having my film [play] at an international film festival and when the film was over, this lady came over and said, ‘I didn’t know Black people had washing machines.’ You say, ‘What?' You get these strange answers and questions from people who don’t see the benefit of watching this diverse body of films made by people of color.”
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978)
Few in numbers, Black film students at UCLA often pooled their talents in support of each other’s work. Woodberry’s first and only feature length film, Bless Their Little Hearts (1984), was a product of that collaboration. With Woodberry in the director’s chair and Burnett picking up screenplay and director of photography duties, they told the story of a middle age man on the margins. Everyday he searches for reliable work to no avail, resulting in a troubled marriage and a diminished sense of self-worth derived from his inability to provide for his kids.
In the tradition of neorealism, the film focused on social plights of the time, utilizing non-actors, documentary sensibilities, and on-location shooting to cultivate a sense of authenticity. In tandem with the humanist sentiments extended to its characters, Bless Their Little Hearts was indicative of working class struggles that Woodberry strived to portray accurately. “I had this ideological or intellectual position and affinity for working class people. I thought they were far too absent from the movies and they were far too important in our communities that they weren’t there,” he said. "They’re a universal class. They exist in all societies. Maybe they exist in different ways under different conditions, but they’re universal.”
Similar sentiments influenced what Burnett would go on to film and write about, frequently finding his depictions at the intersection of masculinity and economic hardship. My Brother’s Wedding (1983) centered on a thirty year old man named Pierce stuck working at his parent’s dry cleaning store. While his brother advances his career as a lawyer and marries into an affluent family, Pierce remains caught in a state of envious flux, unable to dislodge himself from the past and staring down a future with little prospects.
Five years earlier, Burnett rendered similar depictions in his 1978 debut feature Killer of Sheep, a film difficult to find up until 2007 and perhaps the quintessential film of the LA Rebellion. Told with visual poetry and a slice-of-life narrative, husband and father Stan works tirelessly at a local slaughterhouse in LA. Like previously discussed characters and themes in Burnett’s work, Stan also experiences dissatisfaction with life, exemplified by contrasts between childhood and adulthood and the metaphorical killing of innocence. When taken as a trilogy, Bless Their Little Hearts, My Brother’s Wedding, and Killer of Sheep represent a rare and honest testimonial of Black working class communities and the coinciding economic struggles they face.
"Those were people I grew up with. People who worked every day, got up early before the sun came up, and would go to a really hard job,” Burnett said. "My mother worked at a hospital and she would get up while we were still asleep at like 4 o’clock in the morning, bus all the way downtown to get to work, and then come back, and most of the people did that sort of thing.”
Burnett continued, “There was always the concern of ethics and principles and what you should be doing and what’s of value … If someone came over to your house, particularly if it was an older person … you would sit at a table and your mother would offer them food and they would always say, ‘Let the kids eat first.’ I really took that to heart because it told you how to act as a person and as a man.”
Bless Their Little Hearts (Billy Woodberry, 1984)
Both Burnett’s and Woodberry’s films are featured in this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival as part of retrospective on the LA Rebellion. Alongside Bless Their Little Hearts, Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger (1990) and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) round out a trio of films highlighting the LA Rebellion as a watershed moment for Black representation in cinema, recognition afforded not at the time of their release, but in the decades since.
“I was quite surprised that it had that effect,” Burnett responded when asked about the immense influence of his works. “When you’re making films, other people say, ‘No one wants to see those films.’ When I did To Sleep With Anger, it was the same thing … The idea is to expose people to a culture, a narrative that they don’t get all the time. You wonder why this country is the way it is. It’s because of the fact that it’s almost segregated in every area just about. Not only in narratives and stories told, but also regarding people who don’t have any idea what the other half has to say.”
The saying goes we stand on the shoulders of giants, and in the realm of cinema, such phrasing is seldom used, saved for true monuments of the form. However, it would impossible to preclude such associations from the works of Burnett or Woodberry. Neither are household names, but no doubt, you have seen the images of LA Rebellion before. From Ava DuVernay to Sean Baker to Robert Townsend, the images of working class individuals and communities of color recorded on the streets of LA all those years ago continue to inspire generations of aspiring filmmakers with thoughtful, thorough, compassionate portrayals of the underserved and underrepresented.
The films of the LA Rebellion feel remarkably prescient in an era where Hollywood is only now coming to terms with – and beginning to address – racial inequity. It took decades for these films to be recognized for their significance, but their messages remain as timely and universal as when they were first released. To the point of their lasting legacy, Woodberry left with a poignant remark on the importance of realizing one’s vision: “I hope [these films] encourage [people who have something to say] that you can start something. You can try something. Not everyone will agree with you, and not everyone who has an opinion is a useful source, but you have to stand for something and stand with something. And maybe those films are stubborn and even a bit difficult initially for some, but there’s a reward if you stay with it.”
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Quotes used in this article have been edited for clarity and readability. Special thanks to Kevin Conner for edits.
Additional information and resources on the LA Rebellion can be found on UCLA’s website.
